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Powerful and thoroughly absorbing living art. 

Norwegian National Ballet opened its new run of Natalia Makarova’s staging, with Whitney Jensen and Lania Atkins making outstanding impressions as Nikiya and Gamzatti. 

Chrisoph Loy's new Oslo production of Eugene Onegin only somewhat succeeds in its desire to create a meditation on loneliness, but superb musical performances still make it an utterly compelling piece of music theatre.

Ralph Vaughan Williams' towering A Sea Symphony and the orchestra of the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet capped off the Oslo opera season in a singularly loud fashion. 

Despite some dramatic frustrations, at least in Oslo, Jones' production is saved by some truly outstanding singing.

The first staging of Bellini's Norma in Oslo in over a century is unfortunately hampered by an irritating production, yet some glorious singing does much to rescue the show.

Christoph Loy's Oslo production of Wozzeck is a dramatic triumph, with gripping performances from a cast led by Audun Iversen's desperate title character.

After over a century, Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande finally received its Norwegian première in a fascinating production by Barbora Horáková Joly.

The revival of Calixto Bieito's Carmen in Oslo proves a bumpy ride, with uneven singing and orchestral playing, saved by Katarina Bradić's captivating portrayal of the title heroine.

With his first foray into Rossini, Norwegian director Stefan Herheim turns La Cenerentola into a brilliantly funny spectacle, filled with thought provoking humour and outstanding singing.

Calixto Bieito's staging of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem is violent, shocking and uniquely powerful.

Looks can be deceiving in this beautifully sung revival of Thaddeus Strassberger's Oslo production of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro.

Andreas Homoki's 2004 Turandot makes its way to Oslo, but fails to impress with less-than-halfbaked concepts and underwhelming singing.

Ole Andreas Tandberg's production of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk gets a revival in Oslo, and proves even more chilling than the first time around.

Director Ole Anders Tandberg's production of Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse expertly balances the line between irreverent humour and human tragedy.

Calixto Bieito's production of Carmen attempts to humanise the title character, but in doing so leaves the rest as caricatures.

Willy Decker's gloriously sung production of Janáček’s Káťa Kabanová in Oslo made for a uniquely powerful performance.

Strassberger’s production of Don Giovanni raises interesting questions about modern society and our relationship with religion. Unfortunately, this production lacked focus, but is redeemed by occasionally glorious singing.

François de Carpentries’ Oslo production of The Barber of Seville is back for its fourth revival. The singing ranges from the uninteresting to the outright excellent, but the production can still provide a thoroughly entertaining evening at the opera.

Tatyana Gürbaca's new production of La traviata in Oslo may be on the heavy-handed side, but still offers fascinating new insights into Verdi's opera.

Director Johannes Erath sets Wagner's Lohengrin balancing on a knife edge between fantasy and reality in a beautiful, thought-provoking and magnificently sung production.

The world ended yesterday. Possibly. It probably didn’t, but the facts are still kind of fuzzy.György Ligeti’s only opera, Le grand macabre is a strange piece. The story is straightforward enough: Nekrotzar, a Death-like figure, travels around the world of Breughelland warning its citizens of impending doom – a giant comet will destroy Earth at midnight.

What do you get when you mix an old man with a penchant for younger women, a young woman, her equally young lover and a scheming doctor, and set it all sometime around the 1960s, although you wouldn’t really know it had it not been for the petticoats? A rather successful night at the opera, it would seem.

Britten’s opera The Rape of Lucretia is, as the title implies, not an easy opera subject-wise. It is based on André Obey’s play Le viol de Lucrèce, which in turn is partially based on Shakespeare’s poem The Rape of Lucrece. This was Britten’s third opera, and the first of his so-called chamber operas, operas with small orchestras and small casts.

The Norwegian Opera and Ballet seems to be developing a thing lately for staging Puccini operas as flashbacks and/or dreams. There is Stefan Herheim’s La bohème from last season, telling the story as part dream, part flashback from the viewpoint of Rodoldo.